Citing anonymous sources, several mainstream Russian news sites claimed on February 5 that 18-year-old Valery Permyakov, charged with the deaths of seven members of the Avetisian family, spent more than a month in a psychiatric hospital before being stationed late last year at Russia’s 102nd army base in Gyumri.

LifeNews, referencing military investigators, reported that doctors at a psychiatric hospital in the Siberian town of Chita where Permyakov was stationed supposedly detected “serious behavioral disorders.”

An unnamed source told Gazeta.ru that Permyakov earlier had received a diagnosis of mental retardation. “They didn’t have the right at all to induct him [into the army], much less to place him on guard with a weapon,” the source said.

Not being invited to a big occasion usually causes bad blood, but, in Turkey and Armenia’s case, it was actually mutual invitations that started the trouble. After trading invites to anniversaries of two major historic events, the two countries’ leaders are waging a war of letters larded with testy remarks and history lessons.

Armenia on February 2 described as a “petty trick” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s invitation to President Serzh Sargsyan to attend Turkey’s April 23-24 centennial commemoration of the Battle of Gallipoli, a critical World-War-I campaign in which Ottoman Turkey repulsed an Allied invasion. The invitation is “amoral” and runs counter to all norms of protocol, declared Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharian.

Sargsyan earlier had invited Erdoğan to come to Yerevan on the same date to attend Armenia’s commemoration of Ottoman Turkey’s 1915-16 slaughter of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians; deaths it condemns as genocide.

As Yerevan no doubt knew, the chances were less than remote that the increasingly sultanesque Erdoğan would shuttle on over to see Turkey’s Ottoman forbearers condemned for genocide.

A signboard welcoming travellers into breakaway Nagorno Karabakh proclaims a “Free Artsakh” (the traditional Armenian name for the region), but on Saturday a group of Armenian activists learned the limit to that freedom.

The topic is controversial, and, apparently, not one that Karabakh’s de-facto leader, Bako Sahakian, a onetime KGB employee, is eager to debate publicly. Particularly amidst an uptick in security-concerns, as fatal clashes with Azerbaijani forces continue.

Sahakian earlier had warned that the motorcade could bring undesired consequences to Karabakh.

But participants charge it was the Karabakhi police who did that.

As the motorcade on January 31 drove toward Karabakh, video footage filmed by Founding Parliament activists showed uniformed police demanding documents (claiming they were “checking for a raid”), and then starting to attack both the cars and their occupants.

On an overhead ridge, masked men with automatic rifles closely watched the clash, while various men in civilian clothes surfaced to join in. One of the witnesses, Aram Hakobian, claimed to Aravot.am that gunshots had been fired, and that the uniformed men had thrown the Armenian flags on the ground and stomped on them.

The Turkish and Brazilian soap operas and scandal-sheet talk shows that deluge Georgian TV might need to move aside. To help guide Georgia’s national narrative in the “correct” direction, the all-powerful Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili is making a new, “real-life” political drama series and also will host a political talk show.

The TV saga’s proposed title, 9 + 1 Years, has already drawn jocular comparisons to "9 & 1/2 Weeks," the erotic 1980s Hollywood drama that was a smash hit in the ex-USSR. But in fact, it refers mostly to the 2004-2013 rule of ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, still ex-Prime Minister Ivanishvili’s arch-nemesis . (The film may also focus on the Georgian Dream's first year in power, from 2012-2013; hence, the +1.)

The Ivanishvili-Saakashvili battle is certainly worth a dramatic interpretation, but 9 + 1 Years is expected to be a one-sided take on just how hellish Saakashvili’s nine years in power supposedly were. “Nine Years” has become a mantra that the ruling, Ivanishvili-created Georgian Dream Coalition repeats to outshout just about any kind of attack on its governance record, be it failure to fix the roads or the lethargic economy. To many observers, it also reflects the government’s failure to develop and articulate any other vision for Georgia’s future; a problem that is noted both inside and outside Georgia.

A Russian soldier who allegedly massacred an Armenian family is expected to stand trial in Armenia, not Russia. Armenian General Prosecutor Gevorg Kostanian on January 15 made this clear to outraged citizens, who were worried that Armenia would defer justice to its Russian big brother.

The January 12 slaughter of six people in the northwestern town of Gyumri, the site of Russia’s 102nd army base, could not have come at a worse time for Armenia. Just ten days previously, its controversial membership in the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union had become official. The sign-on took place amidst heavy criticism of Yerevan’s economic and security dependence on Russia.

The Gyumri murder now has put Armenia’s policies toward Russia further to the test. Angry Gyumri residents have demanded the handover of the alleged culprit, Private Valery Permyakov, and accused the authorities of mollycoddling Moscow.

Russia’s ambassador to Armenia, Ivan Volynkin, appears aware of the risks of such sentiments. In January 15 comments to the state-financed Russian news outlet Sputnik (picked up by Armenian news outlets), he expressed condolences for the tragedy, but emphasized that “this problem must not be politicized."

"Crime has no nationality, especially in this case," he emphasized.

Armenia’s small Heritage Party, the most outspoken of Armenian political party against economic integration with Russia, so far has called only for a transparent investigation into the crime.

Keeping up with the regional fad of being annexed by Russia, the separatist territory issued terms of reference for how it would like to be absorbed.

The draft document offers to surrender to Russia such attributes of de-facto statehood as the army, police and courts. Not to mention, the "protection and patrolling of national borders."

Customs checkpoints (not generally accepted for South Ossetia internationally) would be eliminated between the region and the Russian Federation and any restrictions on citizens moving across the de-facto border would be abolished, the draft continues.

In other words, no need to send little green men. There is a catch, though -- South Ossetia, an impoverished region of some 50,000 residents, wants Russia to pretty much sustain it financially.

The region, which was recognized by Moscow in 2008 as an independent country, purportedly sees this takeover as a way of reuniting with its Ossetian kin in neighboring North Ossetia, part of the Russian Federation.

The notion has been around for awhile, but the annexation of Crimea and proclamations of independence by Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, breathed new life into South Ossetia’s plans.

The detention of the head of a non-governmental organization promoting transparent government in Georgia has raised suspicions over the authorities' motivation.

Institute for Development of Freedom of Information Director Giorgi Kldiashvili was detained on December 12 while carrying a dismantled firearm in Tbilisi. His license did not allow taking the gun out of his house, but he admitted to taking the weapon to a repair shop, according to an IDFI statement.

The group, though, maintains that the nature of the offense and Kldiashvili’s reputation did not warrant the arrest that followed.

After being stopped for carrying the gun, Kldiashvili himself showed up for questioning by police, who arrested him on the grounds that he supposedly could try to avoid prosecution. Two days later, a Tbilisi court found that there were no grounds for remanding Kldiashvili and he was released straight from the courtroom.

It has accused both the interior ministry and prosecutor's office of trying to intimidate Kldiashvili. The organization already is suing the interior ministry for allegedly failing to meet a request to release public information,

A senior parliamentarian from the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, Tina Khidasheli, however, has spoken out against the steps taken by police.

The Russian-owned mining company RMG Gold this past Saturday, December 13, overlooked an earlier court order and went ahead and started working a piece of Georgian land, Sakdrisi, that many archeologists claim contains the world’s oldest known gold mine. Opponents to the mining operation are putting up a fight, but, as yet, the economic odds appear stacked against them.

The battle began in July 2013, when Georgia’s Ministry of Culture abolished Sakdrisi’s seven-year-old status as a permanently protected historical site. The decision produced a sharp reaction from local civil society activists and international academics.

In June, the Tbilisi City Court overruled the Ministry of Culture’s decision about Sakdrisi’s status, putting a hold on mining operations. RMG Gold and archaeologists were supposed to discuss a compromise, but, apparently, matters were taking too long for the mining company, believed to be one of Georgia's largest taxpayers.

Unexpectedly, the culture ministry late last week gave the green-light for mining operations to start up again.

The archeological site sits on a 22.24-acre plot of land believed to contain 75 percent of an estimated 20 tons of gold. At $38.83 per gram, that’s nothing to sneer at.

Gold happens to be one of Georgia’s top ten exports and brought in $3.52 million in 2013, or 2.9 percent of the country’s total export earnings. As of earlier this year, RMG, which owns the plot of land on which Sakdrisi stands, has invested $300 million into the cash-strapped Georgian economy, according to Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili.

Georgia has just had a telenovela moment when a vengeful ex comes out of the woodwork. A certain Inga Pavlova, a Russian citizen who claims to be the former wife of Georgia’s perceived shadow-ruler, billionaire ex-Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, has emerged from the shadows to accuse Ivanishvili of bigamy and financial funny business.

In a video posted this weekend on YouTube, the little known Pavlova announced that she intends to sue Ivanishvili, who continues to tower over Georgian politics, for supposedly using her name without her knowledge to set up companies and for divorcing her without compensation.

But Pavlova did not just air her personal grievances. She also questioned Ivanishvili's political record and praised his arch-foe, ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is wanted in Georgia on several criminal charges and continues to shake his fist at Ivanishvili from self-imposed exile.

Armenia ranks third after Israel and Singapore as the world’s most militarized country relative to population and economy-size, according to a report released this week by a German-government-financed think-tank, the Bonn International Center for Conversion.

The Center’s Global Militarisation Index 2014 claims that the small Caucasus country of just under three million is the European continent’s most militarized nation. It measures militarization as the “weight of [a] military apparatus” “in relation to its society as a whole” — a standard that puts Armenia, given its small population, relatively weak economy and strong security concerns, at a potential statistical disadvantage.

Locked in a bitter land dispute with neighbor Azerbaijan over breakaway Nagorno Karabakh, Armenia spent $247 million on arms purchases in 2013. Its next-door arch-nemesis, oil-and-gas power Azerbaijan, has far outspent Armenia, forking out $3.4 billion on defense last year. But because of its larger economy (nearly eight times the size of Armenia’s) and more than threefold larger population, Azerbaijan landed in tenth place.

In terms of the volume and sophistication of its military gear, Azerbaijan may also be far in the lead, but Armenia has 17.9 soldiers and paramilitaries per 1,000 inhabitants, while Azerbaijan has 8.9, the report found.

Russia, with an economy and population that dwarf both Armenia and Azerbaijan, finished in fifth place, after Syria.

The study did not apparently take into account the effect of military alliances with other countries. Russia, which sells arms to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, has its only base in the South Caucasus in the northern Armenian town of Gyumri.

About Tamada Tales

Countries throughout Eurasia lay claim to the tamada (toastmaster) tradition, but in few places is the role of tamada as celebrated -- or as formalized -- as in the South Caucasus. It requires a keen sense of timing and of presentation; a sense of humor as well as of tragedy, and an ability to draw forth an audience with words that stir the emotions. It is not just about making toasts. Rather, it is the ultimate piece of interactive theater. In a region known for its endless news dramas, EurasiaNet's news tamada will help readers make sense of them all.

About The Author

Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance reporter for EurasiaNet.org who lives in Tbilisi, an ancient stronghold of the tamada tradition. He has a lifetime of experience both attending tamada-hosted supras (traditional Georgian feasts) and acting as tamada.

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